


Bring Back What Once Was Mine

by Lexalicious70



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Disney, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 19:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The shaman had said to use his gift improperly might destroy him, but the hell Dick was living in without Cassidy made death seem like a sweet sleep. (Based loosely on Disney's Tangled).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring Back What Once Was Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: Allusions to suicide, some mention of blood/physical injuries.

Bring Back What Once Was Mine

By NeptuneRising70 (aka Lexalicious70) 

 “Dick … we stole a dead body.”

 Dick looked up from the zippered black bag that lay on the sand at his feet, the surface reflecting the flames of the bonfire that Logan had built to keep them warm. Behind them, the Pacific rolled and gushed onto the shore as the tide rose, the foamy waves pulling at the sand, the sound like whispered secrets as it slid away with the water.

 “No, we didn’t. He doesn’t belong to them, Logan. He doesn’t belong where they want to put him!”

 Logan crossed his arms over the front of his green hoodie, already zipped up all the way to ward off the chill. Although the days in Neptune were sunny, it was only early May and the nights still carried the remnants of winter’s chill.

 Then again, it was more likely the contents of that black bag at his feet that was making him shiver. That, and the fact that Dick’s shirt—bright yellow with the words GET DOWN on the front (with a helpful arrow pointing downward toward Dick’s crotch) was now heavily blotched with dark red spots and smears that were starting to turn brown.

 “Dick … they had to. He’s gone, they were only going to do what they needs to be done.”

 “No.” Dick began to unzip the bag and Logan’s stomach lurched. Having to see his friend’s miserably smashed body in front of the Neptune Grand three hours earlier had been hard enough the first time—he wasn’t sure if he could take it again. “It’s not gonna need to be done anymore dude, cos I’m gonna fix it.” Dick looked up, his eyes dark and bruised looking in the firelight. Logan closed his eyes.

 “That shaman in Buenos Aries? Is that what you mean?” Logan pushed both hands through his hair, making it stand up in crazy spikes. “Jesus, Dick!”

 “I saved his life that day on the beach, remember? Pulled him from the water when he got caught in the riptides? He repaid me with that spell. Said it’d only work once and to only use it if I was sure. I still remember the words, Logan. I remember, and I’m gonna use it to bring him back.”

“This is nuts. Jesus.” Logan muttered, and then turned away as Dick unzipped the ME bag all the way to reveal his little brother’s body.

 “Gonna be okay, Beav.” Dick murmured to the silent, still body of his brother. Several awnings and the roof of a parked car had slowed Cassidy’s ninety-story fall before he’d finally bounced to the pavement just to the left of the Grand’s main lobby doors, and in the low light from the fire, he looked like a smashed marionette whose strings had been cut. Dick reached out and touched a lock of his brother’s hair, and it felt stiff and lifeless against his fingers.

 “This—Dick, you can’t believe what that dude told you, he was fucking crazy and you know that! There’s no spell! And—and even if there was, he said using it might kill you!”

 “I don’t care!” Dick’s scream echoed down the beach. His voice sounded like it had been shredded by razors. “I don’t care if it kills me! I owe this to him, Logan! It’s my fault! It’s my fault he jumped! I should have known about Woody Goodman, I should have known about everything! But I was too busy treating him like shit over Mac instead of being his brother!” Dick got to his feet and shoved Logan backwards. “Just get out of here, then! If you don’t believe it then just get the fuck away from us!”

 Logan stumbled back but made no move to retaliate. The pain in Dick’s expression told him that there was nothing he could do to hurt his friend any worse. He put his hands in the air and turned away, retreating up to a stack of rough, irregular boulders about ten yards up the beach. He climbed them, shivering, and tucked his hands into the pockets of his hoodie as he watched Dick return to the fire. His best friend fell to his knees, and a moment later, the wind carried his song back to Logan, the words cracking with loss.

  _Flower, gleam and glow_

_Let your power shine_

_Make the clock reverse_

_Bring back what once was mine_

_Heal what has been hurt_

_Change the fate’s design_

_Save what had been lost_

_Bring back what once was mine_

_What once was mine …_

“What am I doing here … this is crazy!  _I_ must be crazy!” Logan muttered as he stared down the beach at Dick, who was bent over Cassidy’s dead body, repeating the chant over and over. He remembered the day that Dick had saved the old man’s life out in the water, and how he had blessed Dick with a healing spell, warning him that it would only work once—and that the spell itself might kill him if he tried to heal someone whose heart didn’t belong to him. Logan had laughed it off as they’d walked away, but Dick had always believed the shaman to be the real deal and sometimes repeated the words the old man had said to him.

 “When it is time and the words are spoken truly, their light will illuminate every dark place.”

 “I hope you’re right, old man.” Logan sighed as he watched Dick rock back and forth while he chanted. “Because this is about as dark as it gets.”

  _“Flower, gleam and glow_

_Let your power shine …”_

A bright wash of light just out of the corner of Logan’s eye made him sit up. The wind brought tears to his eyes as the strong smell of salt and ocean filled his nostrils, but he barely felt it as he stared down at the sight of his best friend’s tousled blonde hair began to glow with a golden light that seemed to light up his head from the inside. Logan slapped the tears from his eyes and looked again, but the light was only growing brighter.

  _Make the clock reverse_

_Bring back what once was mine_

_Heal what has been hurt_

_Change the fate’s design …_

“Holy shit!” Logan breathed, almost losing his footing and twisting an ankle as he scrambled down off the rocks. The light was engulfing both him and Cassidy’s body now, and Dick’s voice was growing hoarse and tight with what sounded like pain mixed with exhaustion, but he kept on chanting. In the shifting, glittering light, Logan saw that the blood that covered most of Cassidy’s face was vanishing, the smears and globs that had dried across his cheeks growing smaller. Logan paused at the edge of the sand, not knowing what would happen if he interrupted. Dick’s hair now looked like it was made of some kind of gold bullion, darts of shimmering light swirling around the crown of his head and at the ends of his hair. Cassidy’s ruined arms and legs began to twitch, and a muffled crackling noise sounded out, like thick twigs being twisted and snapped. Logan stared.

  _His bones—that’s his bones, healing . ._  .

 Dick continued to chant as Cassidy’s body shuddered and jerked, a blood-soaked electric cable on top of the body bag.

  _Save what had been lost_

_Bring back what once was mine_

_What once was mine …_

_What once was … mine …_

The glow stopped as suddenly as it started, save for a few pinpoints of lights that burned out slowly, like the embers from a fire snuffed out by a breeze, and Dick fell onto his side, motionless.

 “Dick! Oh fuck …” Logan broke and ran to the fire, going to his knees next to his best friend. He put a hand on Dick’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back but then recoiled in shock. Dick’s long, bright surfer’s locks—once the kind of blonde most girls would kill for—were now a mousey brown and much shorter, as if someone had hacked into them with a pair of dull scissors. His breathing was shallow and raspy.

 “Dick? Dick, don’t you dare die on me, you fucking asshole!” Logan shook him hard and then he screamed as a slender hand fell on his shoulder. He turned, his hands raising in self-defense, only to fall to his sides, numb and useless, as Cassidy moved into the firelight, his face whole and clean, his fragile skull reassembled from the jigsaw puzzle of parts the Grand’s cement sidewalk had cracked it into. Logan’s mouth worked but no sound came out, and Cassidy smiled as he nudged Logan aside and leaned over Dick’s motionless body. He ran a hand through the choppy tresses of Dick’s hair and then touched Dick’s cheek before brushing his lips against his brother’s in the barest suggestion of a kiss.

 “Wake up, Dickie.” Cassidy murmured against Dick’s lips, and the older boy’s breathing deepened before his eyes twitched behind the closed lids. Cassidy waited, smiling, and then they opened, the blue irises muddled.

 “Cassidy?” He asked, the strain he’d given his throat breaking the name in two, and Cassidy nodded.

 “I’m home, Dick.”

 Dick gave a soft, wordless cry and sat up, hugging his brother to his broad chest and rocking him back and forth. Logan watched, struck mute with disbelief as he noticed that Cassidy’s hair, once spiky-short and the color of strained honey, was now longer and curly—and as bright blonde as Dick’s had once been.

 “Heal what has been hurt.” Logan murmured, his dark hazel eyes wide, and Dick lifted his head, grinning, his face streaked with tears as he held Cassidy’s face between his big hands and then leaned in to kiss his forehead.

 “I told you he didn’t belong where they wanted him to be—that he didn’t belong to them.” He drew Cassidy’s head to his shoulder and held him as the waves crashed and hissed behind them, tossing droplets of ocean water into the bonfire, which gave its own pops and sizzles in reply.

 “I told you he was mine.”

                                                                _Fin_

 


End file.
